Health insurance

We got a $428.73 bill from Polyclinic today, apparently for various things that we did in the doctor’s office last month, before we decided not to go with them. See the November 24th section of our Money Spent page. I admit, it’s more than I was expecting… and of course they give you no warning or indication of the cost of the things you’re doing while there. I almost feel like they assume that money is simply not part of what they do… that it’s between us and our insurance company. But they’re the ones that know how much things cost, how necessary they are, etc, and should be able to at least inform us that this or that thing will cost however much so that we can know what we’re buying. That would at least help stir my memory when the bill came and something like “RTU PG UTRUS W/IMAG DOC T” that cost $178 was actually an ultrasound and we were glad to pay for it (that’s what I’m assuming it was, at least).

In any case, it turns out that our $3,000 deductible will reset on January 1st, so all of this money we’re spending now won’t count towards the deductible in May. Lame! The full bill for the midwives, home birth, etc is a flat $1,900, and is due upon delivery of the baby. Both fact of which are pretty awesome. I called our insurance and made sure that this would all at least go towards our deductible when the time came, and they verified that it would. The helper at Regence even told me that we can get a free breast pump if we order it through one of these approved sellers. Cool! I’m assuming that we’ll also have to pay for the week 20 ultrasound (coming right before Christmas) that will hopefully be able to tell us the gender of our little avocado-sized swimming character (bigger by then). Very excited for that.

Looking at the list of baby costs that hisboyscanswim.com have put together has been really enlightening. We are going to have a bit of insurance to cover us, but in the end that means we’ll probably pay about half to 66% of the total costs of having a baby.

We haven’t even had our first doctor’s appointment yet. That’s coming up in a week or so, I believe. The doctor that we had chosen (and who had come highly recommended from several friends) for the last pregnancy (which only got to 7.5 weeks, sadly) has since left the practice, so we’ve got to choose another doctor.

I’m curious to see how the $3,300 cost for a vaginal delivery compares to the cost of a birthing center. Also, we’re highly interested in having a midwife and possibly also a doula for before and after the birth. But I have no idea how much they cost, whether midwives are covered by insurance if they’re connected to a physician, etc.

I am expecting total out-of-pocket expenses to probably be in the $10,000 range, hopefully not more. Again, I could be way off. I know nothing.